


His Heart There Fell

by Mertiya



Series: Falling Rings [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fall of Gondolin, M/M, Maeglin's Life is a Tragedy, Tragedy, Trust, apparently today is my day to hurt Mairon horribly, child endangerment, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26150791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Mairon promised to catch him, but Maeglin falls anyway.
Relationships: Maeglin | Lómion/Sauron | Mairon
Series: Falling Rings [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899013
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48





	His Heart There Fell

**Author's Note:**

> title, rather cheekily, from the lay of leithian but cut to change the meaning rather ("'till in his heart there fell the thought/of that cold morn whereon he fought/with Curufin")

Maeglin falls.

It all happens so fast. There’s fire and flame and fury, and he feels _free_ —from everyone who ever hurt him. None of them can hurt him ever again. He’s laughing, or he thinks he is, as Gondolin burns around him and he watches the people who hurt him, scorned him, _spat_ at him running and screaming in the streets. Almost, he can imagine that Eöl is among them, but these are still the folk who took a child who had watched his mother die for him and made him watch his father’s murder too.

But he doesn’t want to hurt another child. Not someone who hasn’t hurt him. He didn’t _think_ of that (or perhaps he didn’t want to think of it?) until he sees Eärendil standing there, crying for his mother. He must have been separated in the attack, and Maeglin sees that little boy, smeared with blood and ash, crying for a mother who might not come back, and he thinks, _What have I done?_ and runs for him.

At the top of the wall stands Mairon, his head thrown back and his red hair streaming in the wind like the blood and flame that is consuming the city of Gondolin. Maeglin thrills and aches to see him, the one who was _intended_ to be his tormentor, who threw off that role and came to Maeglin as an equal. He scoops up Eärendil and calls out—because Mairon will give him this, he is certain, Mairon whose lord would have offered him Idril herself, Mairon who has held him in the night when he cried and screamed—Mairon will let him keep the child safe.

He scoops up the little boy and looks up, waving to Mairon for help, and then there is a _cry_ —and a hand—and someone snatches the child away, and then Maeglin—

\--falls.

~

Mairon is overseeing the battle when he sees Maeglin swerve to grab a child from the middle of the chaos, sees Maeglin look up and wave frantically. A child—of course. Maeglin is too soft-hearted for his own good, but Mairon finds it almost appealing. Stupid, but oddly sweet, and it is all a part of the strange mixture of anger and darkness and pain that is Maeglin.

He takes a step towards his Elf, and then—

\--another Elf appears from nowhere and grabs the child and lays his hand on Maeglin and—

\--Mairon propels himself off the wall—

\--throws him—

\--runs, with wind and flames at his back—

\--and Maeglin does not even scream; his dark eyes light up with hope as he sees Mairon—

\--but Mairon screams his name—

\--and Maeglin _falls_.

He is a Maia and he can move faster than an Elf but he cannot move faster than gravity. He reaches the edge in time to _hear_ it—to hear the sickening noise of breaking flesh and shattering bone. He does not catch Maeglin. He promised he would catch him. He failed.

He rips the child out of the arms of the other Elf and holds it, shrieking, out over the edge, hand trembling, ignoring the cries and pleas of its protector. The child cries. Mairon thinks about dropping it, but, in the end, what would be the _point_?

He does not drop it. He tucks it under one arm and kicks the other away from him, hard, hard enough that he goes flying back and impacts the wall twenty feet away. Mairon will send the Orcs to collect him later. For now—

For now, he makes his way to the bottom of the cliff, the child still safe in his arms. It is quiet now, the sobbing muted, for which Mairon is vaguely grateful. He should not _do_ this; he should not—look. He knows, already, what he will find, but if there is any chance. If there is any chance at all—if, somehow. 

Maeglin is not breathing, when Mairon finds him. There was no chance, and he knew there was no chance, and it doubles him over with pain. Those black eyes are open, staring, intact in the shattered ruin of his face. Mairon trembles. He cannot even close them. He cannot bear to touch the broken thing that is all that is left of Maeglin, who was so full of life, the smashed obsidian remnants of a living lava. Glass, shattered.

_I will catch you_.

He did not catch him.

The child whimpers.

“Hush, little one,” Mairon murmurs absently. “Hush, now. Your life was bought with blood and cannot be so easily taken now. Hush.”

He has no use for a child, but Maeglin cared, enough to risk his life, although he did not expect to die for it. There was trust in his eyes as he looked on Mairon, even as he went over the edge. Mairon sinks to his knees, the child wrapped his arms; his very breaths are pain. Maeglin cared, so the child must be protected, he supposes.

He wishes he had never looked into those black eyes deeply enough to see what lay inside. If he had kept to his original plan, if he had tortured Maeglin until he confessed the location between screams—would he still lie here now? Broken. Shattered. Beyond even Mairon’s skill as a forgemaster to mend.

Mairon curls on his side beside the body of his lover; it is cooling slowly, and he can pretend, like this, that Maeglin is only sleeping. For a little while. Just a little while.

“Hush, little one,” he murmurs again, and, in flames and fury above him, Gondolin ends.


End file.
